Really anything anti-social or disruptive warrants a warning. There is no hard and fast list of impermissible actions, because there are an infinite number of ways that people can make a board unpleasant. A warning says "don't make a habit of doing that, because you are spoiling everyone elses fun".

Sorry if that's vague. There used to be a list of rules, but it got to the point where it was difficult to intervene when someone wasn't technically breaking the rules, but was obviously being a pain in the ass. The "Forum Philosophy" was supposed to make the goals of the site clear, so that anything that got in the way of those goals would be understood to be frowned upon. Since all the staff are regulars, we (hopefully) have a good idea of what makes for discussions and what kills them, and we moderate accordingly.

Liteninbolt wrote:Moderators don't take pleasure is taking action on someone who wants to circumvent this site's protocols. At least I know I don't.

You may not, but other moderators most certainly do take pleasure in this.

Is this the original 'Someone is at the door'? I've moderated in other sites. Not that it was something I wanted to do...I recognized help was needed to keep those sites running smoothly. I know this personally, because I had my own philo site. I could have had mods on mine , but I didn't want to pose duress on anyone else. I had problems and decided to finish out my contract there because of the pettiness which ensued and let the site go.

I was asked to help here and did so. I can appreciate the trouble it takes to have a site like ILP. Granted the one I had was nothing on the scale of memebership ILP enjoys. In my particular case, I opened mine because I enjoy seeing what other's thoughts are and share mine.I don't operate under the 'gotcha' or 'you're wrong' point of view. My interest is in learning by expanding my viewpoint through observing the human dynamic. In some instances I am prejudiced against having converstions with some folks because I know through viewing their posts nothing positive will become of it. The ones I have had unproductive discussions with I choose not to interact with anymore.

ILP's forum rules premise are agreeable with me because it closely aligned with my now defunct site and personal operating structure. I don't agree with a lot that is discussed, but I am still interested is seeing those different viewpoints.

Liteninbolt wrote:Moderators don't take pleasure is taking action on someone who wants to circumvent this site's protocols. At least I know I don't.

You may not, but other moderators most certainly do take pleasure in this.

I don't take any pleasure in doing that. I consider myself something of a laissez-faire Moderator. It may be true that I might be one of the first people to put the possibility of a ban on the table, but I don't take action of any kind unless a definite infraction of the Rules has occurred.

"Love is the gravity of the Soul" - Abstract -/-/1988 - 3/11/2013 R.I.P

I dream about banning. One slow week, I even banned myself. There was no one else to ban.

A little while ago, I quit my job. Told them I didn't have enough time to ban people on ILP and so I quit.

I wake up every day thinking, "Who can I ban today"?

And I just can't get to sleep at night unless I have banned someone.

I just banned a username a few minutes ago. But I'm like a shark. I gotta keep moving. Gotta keep banning. Lest I die.

"Causation "itself" is simply an abstraction of the fact that there are always causes for everything that exists. Causation is an idea, the "cause" of this idea is (properly, namely that cause of the idea which is truly adequate to its ideatum) the fact that causation is always the case (that things always have causes);, or, perhaps you want to extend that causal structure to every moment of thought and experience you ever had that ended up contributing to your ability to understand the fact that causation is always the case." - Wyld

Faust wrote:I dream about banning. One slow week, I even banned myself. There was no one else to ban.

A little while ago, I quit my job. Told them I didn't have enough time to ban people on ILP and so I quit.

I wake up every day thinking, "Who can I ban today"?

And I just can't get to sleep at night unless I have banned someone.

I just banned a username a few minutes ago. But I'm like a shark. I gotta keep moving. Gotta keep banning. Lest I die.

1 Carry your opponent's proposition beyond its natural limits; exaggerate it.The more general your opponent's statement becomes, the more objections you can find against it.The more restricted and narrow your own propositions remain, the easier they are to defend.

Tab wrote:That bastard Schopenwhore stole my trick, I've been using that one for years.

I prefer the "argument of no argument" technique.

Status: auto-win.

Is self-banning allowed at ILP? I mean, if you feel that your own personal level of argument failure is exceeding logical boundaries for any given day. Or maybe it should just be a community function, a type of voting system function. Have a page where users can vote, and after X number of votes, an offending user is auto-banned for 24-48 hours ...

Wait, nevermind, that would end up being a perma-ban for me. "The jury is instructed to disregard the previous remarks."

I am not interested in preserving the status quo. I want to overthrow it.

Mastriani - as the owner of a successful message board website, you may know about this already - we sometimes use the Ban-O-Matic Random Ban Selector. It randomly selects a member name to ban. Most of the time it will, obviously, select a long-gone, zero-post, just-lookin'-around member from back when stuff like philosophy was discussed here. But it's something to do.

"Causation "itself" is simply an abstraction of the fact that there are always causes for everything that exists. Causation is an idea, the "cause" of this idea is (properly, namely that cause of the idea which is truly adequate to its ideatum) the fact that causation is always the case (that things always have causes);, or, perhaps you want to extend that causal structure to every moment of thought and experience you ever had that ended up contributing to your ability to understand the fact that causation is always the case." - Wyld

Faust wrote:Mastriani - as the owner of a successful message board website, you may know about this already - we sometimes use the Ban-O-Matic Random Ban Selector. It randomly selects a member name to ban. Most of the time it will, obviously, select a long-gone, zero-post, just-lookin'-around member from back when stuff like philosophy was discussed here. But it's something to do.

I was not aware of this functionality addition to message boards. I know I should feel empowered to use it, but for some reason, my sense of self-validation in banning seems reduced to almost imperceptibility ...

Apparently, the lack of measureable e-peen drive is now officially an issue. ::sigh::

No intarwebs glory for some of us ...

I am not interested in preserving the status quo. I want to overthrow it.